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The Altoona Water Authority has applied to PENNVEST for $6.7 million to pay for replacement of the screens that keep trash out of the authority's combined sewer overflow tanks -- one of which is near Tuckahoe Park and the other of which is near the Peoples Natural Gas installation on Bellwood Avenue.
If funding is forthcoming, the authority will advertise for bids in April, with construction beginning in early July, officials said at a meeting Thursday.
There would be a lag time after the money becomes available for the screens to be manufactured.
There's a possibility that some of the money would be in the form of a grant, due to the state Department of Community and Economic Development having lowered the income range within which grant eligibility is considered, said Mark Glenn of Gwin, Dobson & Foreman, the authority's consulting engineer.
The DCED lowered that income range threshold so Pennsylvania could capture a higher percentage of funding made available in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, Glenn said.
Previously, PENNVEST didn't begin to provide grants to maintain affordability until customer utility rates exceeded 1.5% of median household income, Gwin engineer Jim Balliet said previously.
After the change, the agency started considering grants to maintain affordability when customers were paying as low as 0.5% of the median.
The city census tracts served by the authority's combined storm and sanitary sewer system are at least close to the affordability range that could make the project grant-eligible, according to Glenn.
The screens are about five feet wide and 14 feet high, Glenn said.
The contractor chosen for the project will not be able to work on more than two of the four screens at each of the CSO locations at the same time, to ensure that each facility remains functional in case of a rainstorm, according to authority General Manager Mark Perry and Sewer Operations Director Brad Kelly.
While the current screens are largely cast iron, parts of the new ones will be made of stainless steel, officials said.
The current screens have lasted about 30 years.
They are at the end of their life spans, and key components are no longer being manufactured, which means that when they need to be replaced, they must be custom-made.
The screens are vital to the operation of the CSOs, Glenn said previously.
Water enters the CSO tanks after storm flow reaches the capacity of each of the authority's two treatment plants.
The screens protect the tanks from trash and other debris flushed off the streets into sewer inlets -- and that otherwise would enter the tanks during rainstorms.
After the tanks fill, water that continues flowing from streets enters nearby streams.
That includes some sanitary sewer flow from homes, although it is highly diluted.
When a storm abates, the authority pumps out the tanks, so the water flows to the treatment plants and so the tanks are empty for the next storm. One CSO serves the Westerly treatment plant and one serves the Easterly plant.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.